Among the information in the database are calculations of financial efficiencies, the degree to which donated resources--including those given by people like you--are mustered in direct support of the charitable mission and which peter out in fund-raising expense and other overhead. We also show whether these ratios have gone up or down. A low financial efficiency rating is no guarantee that a charity isn't performing an important job. But all other things being equal, don't you want as much of your contributions as possible to go straight to the task at hand rather than, say, junk mail solicitations?

But far more interesting is our slide show of the 10 least efficient big charities. Many of them have to us unacceptable fund-raising efficiency ratios (spending more than 30% of the money raised in raising the money). This was often a result of expensive direct-mail solicitations. But there also can be bloated management and overhead.